An insight to nurse workload: predicting activities in the next shift and analyzing bedside alarms influence

Abstract

The effects of nursing shortage and the increasing nursing workload have been emphasized in recent years. Hospitals and healthcare organizations have actively implemented initiatives to combat the workforce shortage and mitigate the effects of high workload among their nurses. In cooperation with a Dutch hospital, this project seeks to understand the workload of nurses by understanding what will happen in the next shift and by measuring the alarm workload of their nurses, particularly the bedside alarms that send signals to wifi phones of nurses, to obtain a partial workload of nurses that may reflect the intensity level of the total nurse workload. The project also investigates the effects of the alarm workload, patient, working condition and staff individuality on nurse performance. Finally, the project seeks to discover possible contributing factors to the alarm occurrence, therefore finding a mitigation to reduce the bedside alarm workload.